Reading, listening to, and questioning America... from the southern Great Plains

The (Biden) deal, its supporters and its opponents

It almost looks like normal. The Senate got its deal and the dissenters (few) were three Democrats and five Republicans. An "overwhelming" approval is what the New York Times calls that. Just about anything the Republicans don't filibuster is a flamin' triumph! Maybe 2013 is a year of fear for the right?

The Senate, in a pre-dawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to
avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation
Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans
while temporarily suspending sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts. ...NYT

It was Joe Biden's success, one in which Mitch McConnell had a share. It probably strikes an awful lot of us as comical that the person we can thank for this may be Ashley Judd? And, of course, market-driven terror:

Quick passage before the markets reopen Wednesday would likely negate
any economic damage from Tuesday’s breach of the so-called “fiscal cliff”
and largely spare the nation’s economy from the one-two punch of large
tax increases and across-the-board military and domestic spending cuts
in the New Year. ...NYT

The dissenters included Senator Harkin who thinks the President gave the Republicans more than he should have.

Next hurdle is, of course, the House.

The House Speaker, John A. Boehner, and the Republican House leadership
said the House would “honor its commitment to consider the Senate
agreement.” But, they added, “decisions about whether the House will
seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until
House members – and the American people – have been able to review the
legislation.”

Even with that cautious assessment, Republican House aides said a vote Tuesday is possible. ...NYT

In the meantime, Harry Reid managed to put the Republicans in a vise with respect to congressional pay raises.

To secure votes, Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, also
told Democrats the legislation would cancel a pending congressional pay
raise — putting opponents in the politically difficult position of
supporting a raise — - and extend an expiring dairy policy that would
have seen the price of milk double in some parts of the country. ...NYT

Unemployment insurance continues. The 2% cut in payroll taxes does
not. And the problems don't go away. Agreements on spending cuts will
have to come before mid-March.

It's not over until it's over.

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As NPR points out, those of us whose income doesn't exceed $250,000 will not be affected by this deal, in terms of taxes. And, of course, government spending is not addressed. Yet. The Times' editorial board is dismayed by much of the agreement and ends with this: "...A cleareyed look at the deal’s limitations shows how much Republicans have gotten for their intransigence."

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As the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza points out, it's Joe Biden's triumph. Long deserved. "Winners" begin with Biden. Then McConnell. And President Obama. "Losers" include John Boehner (of course), followed by Congress and ... President Obama.

Obama’s handling of the fiscal cliff talks felt pitch perfect up until
his Monday event with “middle class” citizens. The rally felt too much
like a campaign rally — Obama was repeatedly cheered — and the president
himself was in a joking mood that didn’t seem to fit the moment. Will
it be overshadow the fact that he got a deal? No. But it was an off-key
note from the country’s top communicator. ...WaPo

There seems to be some agreement in the media about Obama's "rally." It didn't seem that way to me. Were the media sidelined? That could explain the sour grapes flavor of their complaint and Cillizza's sour inclusion of Obama in his "loser" as well as his "winner" list.

Oh, and the final loser was/were the people of Washington's in-group. Their New Year's Eve was spoiled by the timing of the agreement. Aw gee.

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The Economist, that apparently updated its assessment of the deal early this morning, has this to say:

... While Republicans will try to use the sequester
and debt-ceiling negotiations to secure the spending cuts that this
week’s agreement omitted, Mr Obama signaled today he was equally
determined that taxes have to rise further, too. “If Republicans think
that I will finish the job of deficit reduction through spending cuts
alone…they’ve got another thing coming,” he said in a brief public
appearance Monday that riled Republicans with its partisan, combative
tone. It may be that Mr Obama was mostly trying to reassure his own
liberal base that it was the opposition, not him, who caved in this
time. But it may also be a sign of the tone likely to prevail in coming
months. ...Economist

Business and economics commentator John Cassidy is quietly disgusted with what appears to him as a weakened Obama.

As the details of the agreement leaked out on Monday, there was a
rare consensus among liberal and centrist economic commentators that it
was a pretty putrid one. Robert Reich, the former Labor Secretary,
called it a “lousy deal.” Marc Goldwein, the policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Budget, favored an excremental
adjective. Even Jared Bernstein, a liberal economist who until pretty
recently worked for Vice-President Joe Biden, was skeptical. “But jeez,”
he wrote on his blog. “This meets the R’s further on their side of the field than one might have expected given the White House’s leverage.”

Perhaps there is something about the deal that these folks are
missing. I hope so. For now, coming just two months after Obama was
reëlected with a handy majority of the popular vote, it all seems pretty
depressing. ...New Yorker

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Over at American Conservative, Ron Dreher seems just as depressed by the deal as Obama supporters.